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Post by beejmi on Mar 16, 2024 18:29:36 GMT
I probably watch too many 'economic gloom and doom' videos on Youtube to the point that I go there and half a dozen of them are served up and offered
And there does seem to be a 'trend' of people making youtube videos suggesting 'bad things ahead' but I'm not sure it's far off
I (today) see that most people that can't 'make it' on 40 hours a week
Housing costs super high. Food, gas, inflation in general are insane. Nobody even believes the 'good job market' numbers (and it is hard to believe frankly)
The 'culprits' suggested - too much money-printing, too much government spending, Biden's policies, Trump's policies
It won't be more than a few years before most people will not be able to buy a house and all of the 'apartments' (all being built are 'luxury apartments') will be empty
Am I 'buying everyone's bullshit' or am I correct in saying there needs to be major course correction -- that frankly nobody wants to admit is needed
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Post by tamalie on Mar 16, 2024 19:35:34 GMT
You are buying everyone’s bullshit. People have been saying this for literally 40 years at a minimum. They will say it for another 40 years at least. There will always be people who struggle or fall back in financial or status terms. Most people are fine, even the ones who think they have it bad.
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Post by srossi on Mar 16, 2024 19:47:08 GMT
You are buying everyone’s bullshit. People have been saying this for literally 40 years at a minimum. They will say it for another 40 years at least. There will always be people who struggle or fall back in financial or status terms. Most people are fine, even the ones who think they have it bad. This. If you're struggling economically in 2024, you have it better than just about everyone else who's ever lived, unless you're one of the mentally ill homeless (which of course always existed too, they were just locked away in asylums so the rest of us didn't have to see them). Inflation is a huge problem but this stuff comes and goes. Gas is a joke to worry about, like are you new to this planet? You have to figure that tax and spend might catch up to us eventually, but we're probably nowhere near there yet. The overreaction to COVID to the tune of $8 trillion and shutting down the economy and destroying some people's life's work is the only anomaly of the last few years (which happened under Trump by the way, and he's very proud of it and his vaccines, which even might cost him the Alex Jones vote), so that obviously caused a ripple in the waters the likes of which we've rarely seen before, but we're already bouncing back to some kind of normalcy from even that.
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Post by The Ultimate Sin on Mar 16, 2024 22:42:00 GMT
You are buying everyone’s bullshit. People have been saying this for literally 40 years at a minimum. They will say it for another 40 years at least. There will always be people who struggle or fall back in financial or status terms. Most people are fine, even the ones who think they have it bad. This. If you're struggling economically in 2024, you have it better than just about everyone else who's ever lived, unless you're one of the mentally ill homeless (which of course always existed too, they were just locked away in asylums so the rest of us didn't have to see them). Inflation is a huge problem but this stuff comes and goes. Gas is a joke to worry about, like are you new to this planet? You have to figure that tax and spend might catch up to us eventually, but we're probably nowhere near there yet. The overreaction to COVID to the tune of $8 trillion and shutting down the economy and destroying some people's life's work is the only anomaly of the last few years (which happened under Trump by the way, and he's very proud of it and his vaccines, which even might cost him the Alex Jones vote), so that obviously caused a ripple in the waters the likes of which we've rarely seen before, but we're already bouncing back to some kind of normalcy from even that. Correct- this is just like every other conspiracy theory type thing. If you search for "facts" to back it up you'll find them. Of course you can find "facts" to prove the sun doesn't exist.
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Post by Franchise on Mar 16, 2024 23:02:54 GMT
I think as long as the US dollar holds the position as the Petrodollar the wheels stay on for the most part.
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Post by principalraditch on Mar 17, 2024 2:34:29 GMT
I think most of the middle class crying persecution now forget what it was like living in the early Reagan years. Inflation through the roof. Interest rates of 15-20%. Unemployment double to triple what is is now. My wife told me her first car loan was at 18%. Bitches now whining about 7%.
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Post by stone2k on Mar 18, 2024 3:50:05 GMT
The way tech keeps improving at a crazy exponential rate, I really believe it will be less than 10 years when corporations will trust AI enough to let go a major majority of all office jobs that currently are held in the name of more profits, and that huge chunk of newly unemployed people is gonna finally topple the economy when payments for house cars and such are never going to be able to be paid back.
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Post by srossi on Mar 18, 2024 15:03:59 GMT
The way tech keeps improving at a crazy exponential rate, I really believe it will be less than 10 years when corporations will trust AI enough to let go a major majority of all office jobs that currently are held in the name of more profits, and that huge chunk of newly unemployed people is gonna finally topple the economy when payments for house cars and such are never going to be able to be paid back. People have been worrying about technology taking our jobs for 200 years and it hasn’t happened yet. Obviously jobs disappear but they’re always replaced by new ones, many that you can’t even imagine right now.
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Post by tamalie on Mar 18, 2024 16:38:32 GMT
It is also true that many people simply prefer to work with people. How many times have you been stuck in an automated phone line, desperately wanting to talk with a live human being? How frustrating is it to use an automated chat on a company’s website that overly generalizes things to the point that getting a solution to your problem is impossible? Even when you deal with a self service retail checkout, there are always people around to help. People prefer to talk and deal with real people to an extent that AI no company could dare replace everyone.
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Post by srossi on Mar 18, 2024 17:21:15 GMT
It is also true that many people simply prefer to work with people. How many times have you been stuck in an automated phone line, desperately wanting to talk with a live human being? How frustrating is it to use an automated chat on a company’s website that overly generalizes things to the point that getting a solution to your problem is impossible? Even when you deal with a self service retail checkout, there are always people around to help. People prefer to talk and deal with real people to an extent that AI no company could dare replace everyone. I think AI will quickly improve to the point that it will usually be able to help better than the average minimum wage customer service worker. But an entire industry may emerge to support AI, even other low-tech minimum wage jobs, in ways that aren't clear right now. It's just silly to clutch pearls over this shit because we've read this book a million times before. Elevator operators, milkmen, cigarette girls, newspaper boys, soda jerks, telephone operators, carriage drivers...all jobs that employed millions of lower class people that were supposed to destroy our economy when they disappeared, and those last hold-outs always go kicking and screaming and there's protests and newspaper articles about it, as if we're supposed to turn back time just so they still have an excuse to do those crappy jobs even though they're not needed. And some of those older people who held those jobs very well may never have worked again, mostly out of stubbornness and a refusal to do anything else. But their kids and grandkids became fast food workers, dental hygienists, food deliverymen, childcare workers, crossing guards, bloggers, and a bunch of other jobs that didn't exist back then. There's a reason why it's unskilled labor, because anyone can do it. People just don't like change, so they'd rather do even dangerous work that doesn't pay (like work in the mines) rather than a safe desk job that doesn't pay. It's a waste of time to give a shit about what they want, in one generation it's all forgotten and we move on and society as a whole improves and becomes more prosperous and safer. It's one of the reasons why, as I mentioned earlier in this thread, that there's never a better time to be poor as right now, except for tomorrow. Society has gotten to the point where the poorest people in America today have it better than all but a handful of the richest people who ever lived throughout history. Other than land and servants, just about anything else that these rich people from hundreds of years ago spent their fortunes buying, are actually largely available for free or super cheap today, because technology!
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Post by Indikator on Mar 18, 2024 18:33:15 GMT
I hear you. But you could tell that to everybody who want's to commit suicide due to such economic reasons and I don't think you'd be very successful. Sounds a bit like a "Black Mirror" plot
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Post by KGB on Mar 18, 2024 18:53:25 GMT
One thing I've moved away from in recent years is boiling everything down to material comforts and the commas in one's bank account. Yes, we have goods and services available to us that didn't exist in the past and these can and do make our lives more convenient and comfortable. But it can't be ignored that in the last half century the typical lifestyle, the typical family has changed materially. Maybe as many or even more people than ever can be considered middle class, but that's come at the expense of single-income families, stay at home moms, and multiple siblings to share it with. These are things that marked human existence for millennia and we've very rapidly jettisoned that way of life. Is that a good thing? Your mileage may vary. Personally, I think we need to return to a more human existence and stop being bar codes in a globalist bodega.
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Post by srossi on Mar 18, 2024 19:35:29 GMT
One thing I've moved away from in recent years is boiling everything down to material comforts and the commas in one's bank account. Yes, we have goods and services available to us that didn't exist in the past and these can and do make our lives more convenient and comfortable. But it can't be ignored that in the last half century the typical lifestyle, the typical family has changed materially. Maybe as many or even more people than ever can be considered middle class, but that's come at the expense of single-income families, stay at home moms, and multiple siblings to share it with. These are things that marked human existence for millennia and we've very rapidly jettisoned that way of life. Is that a good thing? Your mileage may vary. Personally, I think we need to return to a more human existence and stop being bar codes in a globalist bodega. That's mostly culture war nonsense about the evils of working women and birth control, a rant so old that when it started Rush Limbaugh wasn't even a drug addict yet. It's changing the narrative from the economy to something less tangible that "feels" wrong because you can't win the tangible argument. But like I always say to liberals, I don't care about your fucking feelings, and this is the conservative version of that horseshit. Back on track to actual tangible economics, there are two things broken today that weren't before: Higher education and health care. It's not inflation, housing, or any of this other white noise that often serve as distractions. If we can get those under control again where you don't have to hopelessly in debt to be admitted to a college or a hospital, then we'd pretty much be where we need to be. The first one is easy: a complete and total end to all government aid to schools and students. Within a year, colleges would have to lay off 90% of their non-essential workers (all this DEI bullshit and hundreds of "administrators" that no one knows what they do) and lower tuition back to a reasonable level where a middle class person can either pay out of pocket or not attend. Any college not down with that will immediately go out of business for pricing themselves out of the market, as the free market is supposed to work. Healthcare is tougher because you can tell students to wait it out for 2 years without grants or loans before going to school until things get back on track, but you can't tell that to sick people. But education can be solved with the snap of your fingers, just no politician is even willing to discuss the issue much less actually do it. They think the reverse of making it "free" (complete unfettered unaccountability) is somehow going to magically turn it around, so that no one can ever go to school without government involvement again.
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Post by principalraditch on Mar 19, 2024 1:50:45 GMT
Healthcare won't ever return to the past because the population is growing, and the number of workers is dropping..RN's and MD's. It's benfiting the worker financially, but with the understaffing on this end, the length of time in the market will create even more problems. My stepdaughter is getting close to starting her last year of residency in July. Residents make shit all, @ 50k a year, but at times she'll do up to 80hrs in a week, so the hourly rate is worse than an Uber Driver. Once she's done though, then things change. When she started residency 4 years ago, the Urology Service I work with, started trying to recruit her through me, because there are only 2 female urologists in all of KC. They would have started her off at @ 275k. Now here we are 4 years later and it's moved up to closer to 375k. Well those $$$ have to come from somewhere, and it's the public who will pay the disproportionatly higher rates.
The Endocrinologist group we work with has seen such a massive increase in diabetics here they can't even handle their existing patients, and limit new ones, leading to wait times of up to a year to get in. Derm in the same. Even family Md's are taking up to 6 months to get in as a new patient. I've had to leverage connections through work to get in to certain services for myself or my wife, but most are just going to see wait times continue to go up.
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Post by KGB on Mar 19, 2024 11:52:44 GMT
One thing I've moved away from in recent years is boiling everything down to material comforts and the commas in one's bank account. Yes, we have goods and services available to us that didn't exist in the past and these can and do make our lives more convenient and comfortable. But it can't be ignored that in the last half century the typical lifestyle, the typical family has changed materially. Maybe as many or even more people than ever can be considered middle class, but that's come at the expense of single-income families, stay at home moms, and multiple siblings to share it with. These are things that marked human existence for millennia and we've very rapidly jettisoned that way of life. Is that a good thing? Your mileage may vary. Personally, I think we need to return to a more human existence and stop being bar codes in a globalist bodega. That's mostly culture war nonsense about the evils of working women and birth control, a rant so old that when it started Rush Limbaugh wasn't even a drug addict yet. It's changing the narrative from the economy to something less tangible that "feels" wrong because you can't win the tangible argument. But like I always say to liberals, I don't care about your fucking feelings, and this is the conservative version of that horseshit. I'm not telling you anything you don't know, but my view of what makes the middle class isn't confined to the numbers on a spread sheet. You might think that this topic is wholly defined by parameters set by the bureau of labor statistics and "muh per capita GDP!" but as I implied above that's a dehumanizing approach to life. The middle class lifestyle has been decimated by the forced inclusion of women into the labor market. It's affected homes and wages and is certainly a pertinent topic to any discussion of the change in economic demographics.
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